CTalk
“AI is selling to corporates”: Crane Venture Partners’ go-to-market advice for founders
At Mind the Tech London 2025, Ayala Ples, Head of Platform at Crane Venture Partners, spoke to CTech about the firm’s growing focus on AI and her advice for founders on building go-to-market strategy.
Ayala Ples
(Photo: LONDON FILMED)
“We have almost a billion dollars under management, and we're extremely passionate about investing in technical founders,” said Ayala Ples, speaking to CTech at Mind the Tech London 2025. Ples is Head of Platform at Crane Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital fund founded in London 10 years ago.
“Our kind of USP is that we help with go-to-market,” she explained. From her perspective, one of the most important points of advice for AI founders is that patience is critical when selling into enterprise markets, where the payoff can take time. “AI is selling to corporates,” she said. “My advice is to persevere and build those relationships now for the moment where budgets and internal strategy will be ready to bring AI on board.”
That advice comes as AI has become a major focus at Crane Venture Partners. “Out of the 10 investments we've made, eight are AI driven companies,” she said. Those span multiple sectors, but she noted healthcare as particularly promising: “We didn't used to be so focused on this area. But in the last months, I've invested into AI driven companies in healthcare.”
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Ples also described how AI is changing her own day-to-day work. “ChatGPT is transformative… any task that I do, I start there,” she said, adding that she also uses platforms like Granola AI for meeting transcription and follow-ups.
You can watch the entire exchange in the video above.
